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Independent Planning Commission gives “Nut Coal” a green tick

“Yesterday the Independent Planning Commission gave approval to Invincible, an open-cut coal mine in the Gardens of Stone region, so that it can start mining. So Coal is King even when most of the good coal has been already mined in an irreplaceable and internationally significant pagoda landscape,” said Keith Muir director of the Colong Foundation for Wilderness.

“Nut Coal, so-called because of the particle size provided to Manildra’s ethanol plant, is also king when this mine is over 300 kilometres away by road to this ethanol plant, past many other mines that could provide exactly these same nuts of coal,” Mr Muir said.

“It’s now king even when a previous Planning Assessment Commission had found that conservation is the highest and best use of the area, but not anymore so they say”, said Mr Muir.

“Coal is king when the Bursaria bushes, habitat for one of our rarest butterflys, the Purple Copper Butterfly, shall be experimentally replanted so that the mine can go ahead,” he said.

“It’s king when rehabilitation of past mining can used to justify more bad mining in an endless cycle of moonscapes and proposals ”, Mr Muir said.

“It’s king again when its mine water can be discharged by way of the decommissioned Baal Bone mine owned by a different miner, Glencore, many kilometres away that shall be permanently closed this year and when there’s no plan to discharge it elsewhere”, said Mr Muir.

“They call coal king, even when nut coal is a very strange resource used to make ethanol for so-called green e10 petrol. But the truth is that old king coal is barking mad; economically, environmentally, literally and truly nut coal” he said

“You’d have to be nuts to approve another moonscape to repair a previous one, to re-mine a beautiful public forest by open-cut methods and wreck it for its very last scraps of coal,” he said.